The Lightgarden is an in situ intervention that aims to reveal some invisible aspects of existing space.

The idea of the Lightgarden is that the existing site should not be seen only as a variation of different spaces in classic architectural terms – room dimensions, celling heights, opening sizes, materials, orientation etc. It is also a landscape of light, varying throughout the day from darker areas to bright spots. First, we follow the sun patterns throughout one day to unveil the hidden „lightscape“ in space. This light pattern is then taken into consideration for the festival fit out. Different leisure activities are spread all around the site and according to where they fit best. There is a place to take your second coffee at 11, a spot for a cigarette break, a place for lunch in the sun, a 3 o’clock meeting area, an area for a 5 o’clock sunbathing session and finally a zone for the Feierabendbier.

By playing around with the physical phenomena occurring is space, we shed a new light onto how the building really is.

We look the Glasfabrik site not as ground with a building on it. We see it as a piece of land which needs to adapted for new use. It is as if the walls and ceiling were rock formations. There is no distinction of what is natural or artificial. We take the site as a whole and see how it interacts with physical phenomena around it. The aim is to find the smartest, most cleaver way to fit the new into what is already there. And there is much more than what we see. There are temperature variations, light intensity variations, variable sound reverberations, humidity gradients to name a few. All this is the site. So instead of trying to forcefully modify all this to fit our needs, it is much easier, simpler and cheaper to just distribute the new use according to where it fits best. By doing so, we can make the best of the natural context. It is a change of attitude. Architecture is no longer there to isolate and protect us from the environment; it is a means to adapt naturally occurring phenomena to make them fit our needs. The ultimate aim is to make buildings self-sustained, only relaying what goes on around them.

The Lightgarden for the Glasfabrik festival is a step in this direction: The use of space interacts with the patterns of sunlight that occur in space.

Andrej Bernik is founder of Fieldwork architecture which is a team of architects and urbanists based in Paris. Through their projects Fieldwork architecture questions the relationship between humans and their surroundings in the search of a durable equilibrium. The first step in this direction is to abandon the dichotomie of what is considered natural or artificial. Fieldwork goes beyond this opposition in order to conceive places open to evolution in time and ready for the challenges of the 21st century.

Fieldwork architecture is currently working on a research project for a forest in the city and they are starting an underground parc project for the City of Paris.